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10
Nov
Families given weeks to find new homes for loved ones as Knaresborough facility announces closure
The families of people with profound learning and physical disabilities have been told they have just a few weeks to find new accommodation for their loved ones, as their current home in Knaresborough is to be shut down just before Christmas.
Eight people currently live at Sherburn House, which is the largest service run by the Wilf Ward Family Trust, and their families have been given a deadline of December 16 to be able to find suitable alternative care and accommodation for them.
One of the residents is Daniel Beardsley, whose step-mother Rebecca Fennell told the Stray Ferret:
Sherburn House has been such an important part of Daniel's and our lives for the past decade. As a result of his severe disabilities, Daniel has had a difficult life and we have nearly lost him on multiple occasions.
What needs to be understood is these amazing fighters don’t deserve to be treated like cattle and be sent off to wherever is most convenient to anyone but themselves.
We thought they would have said, ‘we’re in financial difficulty – let's see if we can sort it out over the next 12 months and we’ll let you know’, but instead they’ve just given us eight weeks to find a new home for Daniel.
It’s got to be a good fit on both sides, and that can take months. To have that shaved down to a few weeks is just awful.
The Wilf Ward Family Trust is a registered charity that provides more than 70 residential and supported living services to adults with profound learning and physical disabilities in Yorkshire, and also has two accessible holiday homes in Filey.
The trust told the Stray Ferret there had been no alternative to closing the facility. A spokesperson said:
This has been an incredibly difficult decision. Sherburn House has been part of our organisation since 2016, and the people who live there, their families, and our colleagues mean a great deal to us.
We explored every option to keep Sherburn House open, including increasing staffing and leadership support, looking at alternative approaches to delivering support, and asking commissioners to review funding.
Once it became clear that the current model could not sustainably meet people’s needs, we made the decision and acted immediately.
They added:
We recognise how upsetting this situation is for families. The suggestion that people are being ‘treated like cattle’ is upsetting and simply not true. Every person is being supported individually, and extra support is in place.
But Ms Fennell, who has contacted Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Tom Gordon about the case, said the closure of Sherburn House could have some serious consequences, both in terms of residents’ healthcare and social bonds.
She said:
A place in Shipley has been suggested to me, but all of Daniel’s specialists and consultants are at Harrogate hospital, and if, God forbid, there’s an emergency – which there has been quite recently – he needs to be close to the hospital.
Also, because of his complex needs, it’s taken staff 10 years to really get to know him. If he has to move somewhere else, we’ll be losing all that expertise.
The staff are there to look after Daniel’s personal care and medical needs, but we see them as extended family.
Two of the other residents have been together in different places for 30 years. To disrupt their lives like this, to pull the rug from under them – it would be bad enough for anyone, but for these guys it’s just appalling.
In an attempt to fight the closure, Ms Fennell has launched a petition to keep Sherburn House open.
But the Wilf Ward Family Trust said the decision to close the facility was forced by a number of factors, including increasing complexity of need, staffing challenges, the suitability of the building, and funding levels that had “not kept pace with what is required to support people with high and changing needs”.
According to research carried out last year by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr) on behalf of Hft and Care England, adult social care providers “are continuing to operate in ‘survival-mode’: sprinting just to stay afloat, being forced to make difficult decisions to survive”.
Most providers (85%) reported that local authority fee increases did not match the rise in the national living wage, leading to providers such as the Wilf Ward Family Trust either absorbing the cost or reducing services.
As a result of these challenges, more than two in three providers have sought internal efficiency savings, and three in 10 have closed parts of their organisation or handed back care contracts.
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